Electric Blue (Kingfisher at Top Hill Low)

We visited THL yesterday and in the morning visited North Marsh East Hide a new replacement hide last year and where work has been undertaken to attract King Fishers. We have spent 30 - 40 minutes previously hoping to see a KF. Yesterday after 10 minutes I was looking out the south facing window trying to see Reed warblers when I turned round and saw this on one of the perching rails.

We then got treated to about 30 minutes of this male KF perching in the same spot, listening to overhead aircraft (really), catching and dispatching a fish before moving onto another pole briefly before flying away a real treat. Well done to the warden and staff at THL who have made such great improvements these last couple of years.

I had time to fit my 2x converter, and remove it again as the bird was slightly too far of for my lens at 500mm, my converter means you have to manually focus, unfortunately when the fish was being dealt with I had the converter on and had the shutter speed far too slow. These first shots are at 500mm, I will post the 'better' of my pictures through the converter separately but the sharpest were those at 500mm, the camera on the tripod for the best part of the time. This was a great experience and opportunities like this are all too rare.

Thistle Eaters

I manged these pictures of Goldfinch today eating seed heads at the side of Castle Howard Lake, I some how do not fancy sticking my head in a load of fluff to eat but this Goldfinch thought nothing of it.

Terradactyl Gannets!

I took many shots on Sunday and am still processing them. They are almost exclusively Gannets, I thought the pictures of the young bird with its bill open was prehistoric, I can't resist another post or two!

Bempton Gannets

We visited Bempton yesterday in fairly ideal conditions for photography. The Gannets were hanging up in the wind to land and flying off along the cliff top. The conditions were bright and sunny, particularly in the morning. It was a superb day. 

Roses grow on you!

Or in this case the young Gold Finch is looking to grow on these rose buds, I was surprised to see it eating these.

My neighbour likes his roses but they are going to a good cause! 

Collared Dove - on the up!

I have been away for a couple of days on a course that I am attending this year. I took this picture earlier in the week of one of the Collared Doves that visit our feeders, just as it took off.

We also have two delightful Wood Pigeons as well as a pair of Collared Doves so you can imagine how the feed goes down!

From The Reed Bed

The small birds of Kent Proved elusive. At Dungeness there were loads of warblers, Sedge, Reed, Whitethroat, Cettie's plus Linnets, Wren, Reed Bunting.

Similarly on some of the other reserves we visited. I spent a few hours gazing into reed beds but everything flew off before I managed any decent shots. The one exception was the Sedge pictured here and then I only got one click of the shutter before it thought better of it. The Reed Bunting was slightly hidden by Reeds but it proves it was in the right setting. The female Bearded Tit was quite a distance away from my lens at 500mm, where there was a little group, but too far of for decent shots so I post purely for the record, my first actual shot of Bearded Tit.